Hypatia and the Church's Involvement in Her Tortured Death
Church Silence Promotes Violence: An Article Series From All-Creatures.org

Church silence promotes violence to humans, to animals, to our environment, to our economy, to our education, to our finances, and to our health.
By: Mary T. and Frank L. Hoffman

In this article I must pay my respects to the great Hypatia. Born in 370 CE, as a pagan, she became the First Woman of science, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and athletics. In short, she was a Renaissance Woman more than a millennium ahead of the Renaissance itself. And like those ahead of their time, she was frowned upon by the old guards, the worst being the Christian Bishop Cyril.

[Ed. Note] The Church seems to have always been filled with sanctioned fear and violence, which is proof of their lack of love as we are told in 1 John 4:18-21.

18 There is no fear in love: but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath punishment; and he that feareth is not made perfect in love.

19 We love, because he first loved us.

20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen.

21 And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.
ASV

The Church feared the intellectual teachings of Hypatia and hated her, and this is the result.

She was jeered by the retarded among the young Turks, though among them she also found her disciples.

She had many loves, but never married, her devotion being to intellectual inquiry and the dissemination of truth based on reason; she was outspoken to a fault in an anti-intellectual society which, when she was 21, much to her devastation, they burned the great Alexandria Library to the ground.

And then, in 415, she was pulled from her chariot by the mob led by Cyril.

She was dragged into a church.

She was stripped naked.

Then she was flayed alive with abalone shells and pottery shards, until her flesh hung in tethers from exposed bones, and her still quivering and blood soaked remains were thrown to the flames.

Ask 100 people in the street about Hypatia, and 99 would not know who she was, when in truth, hers was one of the greatest stories fate had ever told. Not only did the church and authorities cut her to pieces and burned her to death in the fire, they had buried her courageous life stories in their vault of shame. My hope is that my words will do their small parts to resurrect her brave soul, back into immortality. Amen.

[Ed. Note] Then, to make matters even worse, the Church made the murderous Cyril a saint.  This same kind of Church ignorance, lack of love, and violence is unfortunately very much alive today, but it is now mostly directed toward animals and the people who care about them.  Billions of animals suffer and die every year to satisfy human lusts and greed, and many compassionate people have have been ridiculed or otherwise made to feel uncomfortable to the extent that they left their congregations.  If the Church truly practiced the perfect love of Jesus Christ, none of this would happen, and we would have a world filled with the heavenly will of God.

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The intent of this series is to wake up and encourage the Church to greater works of love and compassion (John 14:12).  It is not to condemn the Church, in general, or any individual, any more than Jesus condemned the woman caught in adultery.  Jesus said to her, "...go your way.  From now on sin no more." (John 8:11)  And this is our message to the Church:  Recognize our sins of the past and go forth seeking to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48), correcting the sins of the past, for that is the only way we can truly show the world that we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, might, and mind, including the whole of creation, which includes our neighbors whom we are to love as ourselves.